


A Midwinter Night's Dream

by cccahill18



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Gen, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 02:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cccahill18/pseuds/cccahill18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Christmas Eve, and John can’t help but analyze his Sherlock-less life through a Shakespearean lens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Midwinter Night's Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noctuart](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=noctuart).



> Many thanks to the Sherlock Secret Santa project on Tumblr that got me writing again and to [Sherlock_Holmes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlock_Holmes) for help with editing and for her encouragement all along the way.

John had honestly expected the pub that Greg told him about to be more fitting to the occasion. Well, the occasion as it related to him, at least. It was Christmas Eve, and when Greg texted him about getting drinks, he'd thought the man would have picked a place that wasn't filled with countless twenty-somethings who’d pre-drank their way to holiday cheer before making their way there. John squeezed his way through them and spotted Greg near where he had said he'd be, in the far corner of the bar. Lestrade seemed—well, better than he'd expected.

He didn’t think Greg would say the same thing about him, though. John could feel the detective eyeing him over, trying to appear discreet. He couldn't really blame him—he knew how he looked. Normality was something he'd struggled with in the past few months. Sleeping through the night and eating three meals a day just weren't possible most of the time. It wasn't that he didn’t try. More than anything, John just wanted things to be okay again, but the attempt to go through the motions just ended up hurting more. It was better to throw himself into something and avoid time to linger on the guilty thoughts he’d be obligated to think otherwise. He knew Sarah pitied him, but at this point he really wasn’t up for caring. He’d taken on the extra shifts eagerly once people slowly stopped recognizing him as “that fake detective’s boyfriend,” and that combined with his own private research into what Moriarty had done with the whole “Richard Brook” persona had kept him acceptably busy.

However, the latter really wasn’t anything he could work on at the moment. He felt he’d finally come to a dead end when it came to Moriarty. Really, it should have been a dead end a month ago, but he’d felt it necessary to backtrack his own work to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. But that was the problem with battling against someone leagues smarter and more enabled than you—he’d already anticipated every move that John would make: every phone call, every inquiry, every single search engine keyword. John hadn’t the slightest clue how he did it, but Moriarty always managed to cover his tracks. He knew it must look crazy to the few people left around him—Sarah, Harry, perhaps even Greg—but it wasn’t enough to sway his belief that Sherlock had been honest with him.

Tonight’s drinks with Greg were supposed to be a distraction. Something to keep him occupied instead of thinking why this Christmas couldn’t be like the last, even with all of the trouble that had happened a year ago. Something to stem the thoughts about what he could be doing right now after a 12-hour shift if he’d only been born smarter.

And so here he was now, sitting next to the one person whose life was probably shaken more than John’s, and he was actually looking alright.

“Greg. It’s good to see you.” John’s smile was nearly genuine.

“Yeah, you too. Everything been okay?” 

The wording seemed innocent enough, but John could detect the underlying concern. He looked over the drinks selection and tried to continue as if everything really was okay. “Of course. Fine. Just busy.”

“Well I can tell. Looks like you haven’t had a good sleep in-” He trailed off, not wanting to make a connection that John was already well-aware of. “Work crazy this time of year?”

John shrugged. “As much as can be expected. The cold weather always brings out the flu and colds.” He glanced down at the drinks again as the bartender came close and ordered his beer, and then turned back to Greg. “How are things with you? Have--you been back to Scotland Yard?” He came here prepared for this to be a sensitive issue, but maybe he was wrong, based on how the detective looked. Sherlock would have already told him whether that was the case or not, as well as the why behind it and many other little facts about Lestrade’s recent life that John was missing, but that was something he couldn’t depend on anymore.

“Starting back with a few things, actually. Apparently I was well missed and got a bit of support from places I wasn’t expecting.”

“That’s—that’s great.” John took a sip of the beer after it was placed down in front of him. “And—have you been able to keep the old cases that Sherlock had a part in?” He’d done research into it, and was fairly sure he knew, but it couldn’t hurt to hear the latest. Greg, though, gave a slight grimace.

“Um, yeah. Yeah, they’ve been held. Took a bit of work, but we were able to downplay his role. Your blog didn’t help much, though.” He tried to laugh, but John didn’t follow suit.

“You know more than most that’s not true.”

“’Course I know that, John. You don’t think that I had a hard time with that?” Not enough. John sighed. Greg honestly did look guilty at the moment, but--his guilt didn’t seem to be eating him out from the inside. He took a long sip of his drink. Really, he wasn’t in any position to be giving Greg judgment, but he couldn’t stop the bitter thought that he’d never discount what Sherlock once was, even if it was for his career. He’d get nowhere from thinking like that, though, not when Greg was one of his only friends left. John had said what was necessary, and now it was probably best to move along.

“Well. What kind of things have you been working on? Anything interesting?” 

Greg looked like he was trying not to show how relieved he was at the change of subject. “Suppose it doesn’t matter too much now. It’s not like you’ll be-”

He paused and looked like he was physically biting his tongue. John felt the familiar cold knot in his stomach and just gestured for Greg to go on. It’s not like it wasn’t true. 

“Well, just not mentioning names or anything, actually a really sad one. These two young kids got in a fight with their parents and decided to do themselves in like Romeo and Juliet. Boy’s in intensive care, girl was dead at the scene. Stupid waste of life, if you ask me, but fairly simple to take care of.” Greg scowled, as if he tasted something unpleasant, but to John’s surprise, he seemed to brush it off and move on fairly easily. Maybe Sherlock’s death actually made it easier for him to separate work from the rest of his life.

However, walking back from the pub later, all John could think about those two kids who thought that they had nothing left. And the poor boy who’d learn faster than was at all fair that he’d have worse things to deal with than an argument with his parents—and he wouldn’t even have his girlfriend to help him out with it. If John knew one thing, it was that being lonely and left to wallow in your own mistakes could be worse than anything.

It’s not like he’d never felt the urge to end it all himself—he’d been closer than he’d like to admit when he got home from Afghanistan, when his life seemed devoid of anything close to resembling hope for the future. But things had gotten better, extraordinarily so, when he met Sherlock--and now, several months after his death, he wondered if he would relapse back to that state. Did that one man, the best friend he’d ever had, really have so much sway in his life?

If the answer was yes, then he really wasn’t all that different from those teenagers who’d tried to kill themselves. Was Shakespeare simply trying to pen an Elizabethan soap opera all those many years ago, or was he perhaps portraying life as he saw it—laced with utter tragedy? What was that quote the Bard wrote, about people just being actors? Maybe all he was destined for, what anyone really was destined for, was a tragic ending. Spending life trying anything to be happy, but having nothing ever really work out in the end.

John felt himself start to shiver, and brushed it off as the result of being out far too long in the winter night. Spotting the drab building in which his new bedsit lay two floors up from the street didn’t really help the chill pass.

Inside, John really didn’t feel all that much warmer, partially due to the fact that heat was expensive to pay for when you were on your own, and also a bit due to the uncomfortability that lingered from his previous thoughts. Almost mechanically, he went through the routine of putting water to boil for tea and fetching a jumper from the small wardrobe next to his bed. He ran his fingers over the ridiculous Christmas one from last year before grabbing his plain oatmeal jumper that was going a bit thin at the elbows.

With his tea made, John sat down at his desk and powered up his laptop, burning time before he’d be obligated to go to bed. With no more Moriarty-related issues to look into, John stared blankly at the Google homepage for a few minutes before finally typing in “Shakespeare” and hitting enter. 

For the next half hour or so, he flicked through several websites with different facts and analyses before finally finding himself on an online version of Macbeth. One of the best of the playwright’s tragedies, so they said, and one he’d neglected to read when it was assigned back at school. John knew continuing on the depressing train of thought from earlier in the evening was a bad idea, but he couldn’t fight the compulsion. After all, was he not a tragic figure in his own life? Or at least the supporting character in someone else’s? It might be better to read about the fate of someone else than have to actually think about the eventuality of it for himself.

John didn’t want to die, anymore; he’d tasted what life could be in its best form, and it was something that he clung to even when the thoughts of why he’d lost it—and why he was to blame—were some of his most frequent tormentors. It was that torment that made him wonder, however, if he could continue on like this forever, if nothing he did was enough validate what he, and especially Sherlock, had accomplished. What, then, did he have left?

He was anything but a literary scholar, but John was able to made headway through the play, skipping the bits he didn’t quite understand and tracing the parts that he did with a finger against the screen. The former, however, become more prevalent the closer he moved towards exhaustion, and the last thing he remembered before he fell asleep sitting up in his chair was that quote he’d thought of earlier, about people and actors, and a tomorrow and a tomorrow and a tomorrow of loneliness.

For a while, John flitted from dream to dream, most of them involving spectral versions of Sherlock who hovered nearby, just at the edge of his vision and whispering things he couldn’t make out. He’d try to chase him, because he knew it was imperative, and that something horrible would happen if he didn’t listen. He couldn’t let him down again after letting him die in the first place. Finally, finally, he was able to pick up something that the ghost seemed to be whispering, but he couldn’t see him anymore. The first tendrils of panic started to take hold and he could feel himself slowing down despite his efforts to move faster.

“John!” He jolted awake, disoriented and breathing fast. The laptop was dark and only faintly humming. After a few deep breaths that become increasingly less shaky, John rubbed his eyes. He froze, though, when he heard the floor creak behind him. There wasn’t enough light in the room to illuminate the screen in front of him with the scene behind him, and he regretted that his gun was in his bedside table instead of his desk.

“Who’s there?” Funny how an actual threat was less frightening than his night terrors. John turned, though, and changed his mind.

“John. I—thought it would be better to wake you up. You seemed distressed.” Standing there in front of him, seemingly solid, was Sherlock Holmes himself. He was thinner than usual, with a nasty gash with a series of messy looking stitches holding it together on his left cheek, and, weirdly enough, clutching a slightly mangled wreath. It would also be very hard not to notice how uncharacteristically nervous he looked. John gripped the back of the chair.

“Have I finally lost it then?” he asked, laughing mirthlessly. Sherlock opened his mouth and quickly closed it again.

“No. No, I’m here. Back. Alive. Was planning on telling you a bit less—” He threw his hands about trying to search for words, causing the wreath to dump a good number of needles onto the floor, “suddenly.” John saw him search his face, like he was trying to gauge his reaction. However, he really wasn’t in a state to know what exactly what his face was doing.

“No.” John walked the few paces over to his bed and sat down. “No, you’re not.” He rubbed his eyes with his palms and then kept them closed. “I knew this would happen. Eventually. Just a matter of time, right? Before I cracked.”

“You’re reading too much Shakespeare, John.” He opened his eyes to see Sherlock reading over his laptop, now bright. “Lestrade told you about his little suicide.”

“He mentioned it.” John blinked a few times and looked over at his friend who was in the process of scanning over his scant furnishings.

“Never really cared for Shakespeare. Too forced. Life has its patterns, obvious, but you can’t force fit things for a genre.” He wondered if Sherlock knew what his thoughts had focused around—of course he did, he corrected. And so now that he was acknowledging that Sherlock was acting as Sherlock should . . .

“You’re actually here, then?”

“Don’t be obtuse, John.” Sherlock didn’t have his usual bite, though. Remembering he had a wreath in his hands, he looked around again quickly and decided to lean it against the desk. “It was Molly’s idea to make it back for Christmas, actually. She thought you’d appreciate the sentiment.” He looked cautiously at John again to see if he words were having their desired effect. John, again not sure what his face was showing Sherlock and too overwhelmed to care, waited for his friend to continue.

“I agreed. Thought it might make things easier. Just sped up the job, nothing much really. I-”

“You don’t have to explain right now, Sherlock.” John was staring at the cut on his cheek that seemed to have started dripping something, and felt that that might not be the only thing included in his downplaying. God, he was clueless as to what was happening here, and he couldn’t deny that there was a part of him that was incredibly irritated that Sherlock did—whatever he had done without telling him, but that explanation could wait a day. It was Christmas, Sherlock was obviously not alright, and was it really that big of a crime to want to feel happy for a change? “C’mon, sit down. I’m making you tea and then checking you out. You look something awful.”

For once, Sherlock didn’t put up much of a fight, and John could see the exhaustion in his eyes showing for the first time. Without thinking too much about it, he moved over to give Sherlock a quick hug, trying not to squeeze too tightly in case of any injuries that might be lurking under that ridiculous coat. He paused there for a moment.

“Where did you get that wreath?”

Without removing himself from John, Sherlock mumbled, “Lestrade’s. I come back and apparently he and Molly are in a relationship. Probably wasn’t the best way to announce the fact that I’m alive, while they were in bed together. But since he knows now, though, I thought it fair enough to take his wreath. Believe me, Molly outdid herself on decorations.”

John gave the first legitimately genuine laugh since before he’d thought Sherlock dead and stood up to move the few feet over to the kitchen. He felt good—not quite content, but hopeful.

“Merry Christmas, Sherlock.”

“Merry Christmas, John.”


End file.
